Canberra Street Art: the veteran

There are a handful of graffiti writers who can say they've witnessed the transformation of the street art scene in Canberra.

Byrd is one of them.

Back in the early 2000s, Byrd began to paint illegal graffiti on the otherwise blank walls around town.

Byrd and the other 'writers' in the capital were not impressed.

"Some of the first things I put up were a mix of letters and reproducing life drawings...which wasn't particularly well received within the scene.

"I kept doing stuff because it's so much fun, but I shifted the content slightly."

In the decade and half since, the walls are no longer blank, and Byrd has transformed himself.

Back then he was considered to be conducting criminal damage, now he paints murals in those same public spaces and will soon open an exhibition at CMAG.

So what's changed?

Apart from his work getting better, the boundaries of acceptance when it comes to graffiti have shifted.

"Canberra is a unique space because it's very liberal...people will enjoy that you're doing something that is slightly askew...to that end there is a lot of opportunity here."

Opportunities that Byrd takes full advantage of; many of the murals commissioned by the ACT Government or private business owners have been sprayed from his aerosol can.

Though painted with the time honoured method, these pieces are not your typical graffiti.

Grasshoppers nestled in a jungle scene on a wall in Civic, bald tattooed cats on a toilet block in Dickson and parrots and galahs on an old bus are now amongst the collected works of Byrd.

It's a long way from the early days of painting walls, though he still remembers the thrill of painting illegally.

"It's like a game, at night; being in a place at night, trying not to draw attention to yourself...the terror of how noisy the cans are when you're trying to mix the paint.

"I guess that's why it appeals to young men a lot, is that bucking the system, that [sense] of me against everyone else in the moment."

Street art vs graffiti

To the uninitiated, street art and graffiti and interchangeable terms; in reality they are quite separate methods and styles.

Arriving more recently, street art is more imaged based and is often to referred to as 'brandalism' - the act of repeating the same image in as many places as possible - made famous by UK stencil artist Banksy and US poster artist Shepard Fairey.

This echoes the code of graffiti writers the world over; the unwritten rules of the street around since the birth of the movement in New York in the 1970 and 80s.

Distilled down to its essentials, if you're name is in more places than your rivals, then you get the upper hand.

Each city has its nuances but the rules are roughly the same wherever you go, with Canberra no different.

"The more effort equals the more time, the more time you have to spend in a space the more risk [there is] and so the more value there is to what you've done," explains Byrd.

He says that street art has changed the way people think about graffiti; while graffiti "talks to itself", street art is more easily understandable by people and therefore more popular.

This has greased the wheels of the graffiti machine but also shifted its gears.

"[With] street art a lot of the effort happens in the studio before you go out, at best you put about six minutes up, there's less risk, so it's blown all the old hierarchies apart."

The writing is on the wall

Though more publically palatable now, both graffiti and street art are still carried out illegally, something Byrd says will always be a part of the culture.

And he's OK with that, to a point.

"I'm not against people going out and [painting] stuff...what I don't get is people doing the same thing all the time...I don't understand how you can do a piece and not look back and reflect on the actual thing."

As Canberra grows physically and culturally, Byrd says that a vibrant art scene is a good thing, that it leads people to consider the capital in a different way.

"You're looking at the urban space and the city as a resource...writers and street artists walk around the city going 'that's an empty spot, that's available, that's not'.

"It's a beautiful thing, when people are looking at the place [for its] potential rather than simply drifting through."